Posts Tagged ‘Gangsters’

We’ve probably talked about this before, but movies that took place before the fifties and featured guys in hats doing guys in hats things were very cool for about twelve minutes when I was a kid. For reasons I’ve never been quite clear on, I was very VERY into the time era that went from the 20s to the 40s when I was between the ages of 11 and 16. Maybe it was an obsession with old Warner Brothers Cartoons, maybe I got a taste of some really good Film Noir, maybe I just liked fedoras. Who can say? No, it’s probably not just the hats, I think it has to be the time period. You can’t just say “This has guys in hats” and get me interested, but you can say “It takes place in 1935” and I am THERE! Case in point, this movie. I pretty much have to put this thing into context, because without context it almost doesn’t/shouldn’t exist and in many ways it fails to make sense on its own. It’s not a good movie, but it’s too well made to be on any “So bad they’re good” lists, mostly it’s forgotten. Again, without context, you fail to understand why such talent would go to such wretched waste.

I’m going to open with a controversial statement, I’ve never been a huge Coen Brothers fan. They’re okay, but they always strike me as trying just a little too hard to be quirky, rather than just letting it happen. Even when they’re good, you can see this going on. The deliberate attempt to be quirky works so less well than tings that are just plain quirky. Miller’s Crossing has many an example of them trying to hard, but for the most part it works. I think it tends to work because the movie isn’t supposed to be funny, and as such, the quirky characters can be horrifying, rather than comedic. I’m going to tell you now, I almost never laugh as a Coen Brothers comedy. However, let us look at what is good and not so hot in this movie, shall we?

We haven’t talked about a good old fashioned bad movie in a while, and this is close to as bad as they come while still being enjoyable. Oh yes, this movie is enjoyable, but it’s terrible. You don’t watch it for the fine performances or the sparkling dialogue, you watch it because you’re fascinated that this sort of thing got made despite the fact that clearly no one much cared about the end product. It’s also interesting to see how far some people have fallen. This was shown as an HBO original movie, and it’s not even a very good one, but it has some names that people would recognize like Ice T and Christopher Lambert. They’re okay in this movie, but they cover the range of performances for actors who are just picking up a paycheck. Ice is chewing the scenery and Lambert is half asleep. Still, the movie is fun, but for all the wrong reasons.

Made in the early nineties, when the crack epidemic was still a thing the media talked about on occasion, this is the story of one inner city drug lord’s rise and fall. So how does this early 90s gangster movie hold up when trying to watch it today? Surprisingly well actually. While some might want to compare this movie to gangster epics like Scarface, The Godfather or Goodfellas, I think there are a few points that separate them. For one thing, this is way shorter, it clocks in at just under two hours while the other films I mentioned hover around three. For another, there is a completely different flavor to this film and for a third… well, let’s talk about the movie, shall we?

Really, we’re going to do The Killer? We want to go to that one? We don’t have some obscure shoot ‘em up that no one has seen? Out of cheap westerns already? Actually, we just did one, so probably don’t want to do another for a while lest I be known as the “Cheap Westerns Guy” which would kill my stab at being the “Doesn’t Like Anything New Guy” for the internet. I suppose I should explain my reluctance before we go much further. I like John Woo’s movies, but I don’t like them in their entirety. There are a lot of problems with John Woo, like he really, really wants to make a romance but keeps making gun operas that are like old-fashioned westerns. I wish he’d just make a romantic western and get it out of his system. Possibly, he wants to make a gay romance, but can’t come to terms with it and has to have the guys shooting at each other. There is an undercurrent of homoerotic bromanceness about his movies, after all. Another problem is that he’s another one of these guys who keeps wanting to have his movies run about 9 hours long, forgetting that he’s making commercial action movies. So a lot of what he thinks the movie is supposed to be ends up on the cutting room floor, which is never a good thing. Anytime you have to cut a movie in half, it looses coherency. What I’m saying is, that while I like The Killer, I’m afraid that in reviewing it I’m going to end up vivisecting it and just point out all its flaws to the world. However, this is the movie I’ve slatted for this week and if I don’t review it I’ll be going back on what I said I’d do, so here we go.

Get out your manliest whiskey for this one kids. Not because you like it, but because that’s what a Real Man® is supposed to drink. Yes, once again, my love for the silly and the stupid comes through. Here’s a controversial statement for you, The Spirit is actually pretty good. Okay, yes, the movie is bad. BUT! It’s a good kind of bad. It’s a “Saturday night with friends and a bottle” bad. In fact, it’s a lot of fun if you watch it with the right mindset. Yes, that mindset is that this is going to be a fun, campy, adolescent thrill ride, but I will point out it is based on a comic book.